47 ALBUMS I LOVED IN 2024
"And it comes from these notes."
I always drone on about not ranking end of year lists because, hey, I’m just a really exceptionally cool music guy. A cool music guy who is better than everyone else and so much better than all the pointlessly ranked lists published for clickbait and comments, but DAMN; this year I actually appear to have a number one favourite album: Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee.
YES, the one that was *High Fidelity record shop nerd voice* 2 hours long, 32 songs spread into two parts, only available to buy direct via a web 1.0 site and not on any streaming platforms.
YES Cindy Lee is Pat Flegel, who was in Canadian underground but super influential outfit Women, which - because I am a cool man, remember? - are without doubt my favourite band of the last couple of decades.
And YES its with a crushing and painful inevitablilty that it’s the album Pitch bloody fork have stuck at number one in their end of year list, unequivocally confirming me as the official most exceptional and tragic try hard old bitter 6 Music dad going :(
Well anyway, regardless, it’s The Album for me. I liked that I had to make an effort to get to know it given its awkward, deliberate non-release. Listening to it feels like an adventurous experience; poring over some sort of luxurious, precious artefact. I took a nostalgic pleasure in having to transfer files, re-tagging the screwed up metadata, downloading the artwork, listing via a VLC player app. I guess it’s a similar sort of committed investment I used to make in a record when I was prepping a band interview, spending days and days lost inside an album in the same way I would have as a 14 year old, repeatedly finding deep new things to love. A level of investment I find hard to make time for now, for many reasons, but I’m grateful that I was forced into it this year.
I know you’re not supposed to admit it, it’s sort of impure to say so as a music fan, but I LOVE shuffle. Albums are entire bodies of work. Listen as the artist intended. Respect the art. I think it comes from a lifetime of obsessing over late night radio, craving songs in an unpredictable, awkward sequence. The very opposite of passive listening. I want shocks. Awkward segues. I want my attention arrested. I don’t want to switch off. I absolutely bloody love having a massive huge list of full albums on shuffle. I’ve done that a lot this year - whenever I’m travelling around, the car, the train, walking the dog, bathing the kids, washing up etc. It’s simple. Hearing a new thing I like, that I didn’t choose to put on, that I didn’t know I was going to hear, literally changes the course of my day. For the better. For the best! Days can be a challenge! Brains can be frustrating and uninspired. Shuffle whips me out of the murk and deposits me elsewhere, to a place of inspiration and joy. To where I remember what’s good.
This seems to be the year that I finally got back into listening to more tough, challenging confrontational, angry music. At least In a way that I haven’t for a long time. Probably since Covid I think, (there’s no doubt working on things like this and this since 2019 will have helped maintain the haze).
I think an extended period of not digging for new music this year, at least in the way that used to ‘cos of The Radio, really helped me reset and rediscover a craving for that [earnest sentiment trigger warning] impossibly great feeling you get when you find something fresh. When something new and weird and jarring and other worldly and thrilling literally barges its way in. And you remember.
On the decent-in-places new Beatles ‘64 doc on Disney+ there’s a bit where David Lynch pops up randomly as a talking head and, having talked about seeing the Beatles’ first US concert at the Washington Coliseum, says:
“music is one of the most fantastic things. Almost like fire, and water, and air.. It’s like.. A Thing! And it does SO much! It does a thing for the intellect, it does a thing for the emotions, and certain kinds of music can swell the heart, to almost burst! Tears of happiness flow out of your eyes! You can’t believe the beauty that comes, and it comes from these.. notes!”
It’s a sort of startling moment, where he kinda lays out why music does the things it does to us, and in a really earnest and simple way that feels like he *just* realised it himself. It’s so close to sort of lame, but also profound. I’ve not stopped thinking about it. A similarly basic and obvious thing that occurred to me recently (while listening on shuffle) is that all music - all music! - is literally a series of choices made on the part of the artist. That’s it. Notes and choices. I’m so grateful for these series of notes and choices.
48 ALBUMS (AND A COUPLE OF EPs) FROM 2024 THAT I LOVED UNEQUIVOCALLY AND AM EXCITED TO PUT ON AGAIN AND AGAIN (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
JPEGMAFIA - I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU
Nala Sinephro - Endlessness
Black Decelerant - Reflections Vol 2
YATTA - Palm Wine
Good Sad Happy Bad - All Kinds of Days
Peel Dream Magazine - Rose Main Reading Room
Chat Pile - Cool World
Cola - The Gloss
The Green Child - Look Familiar
Sad Eyed Beatniks - Ten Brocades
Heriot - Devoured By The Mouth of Hell
Not Waving & Romance - Infinite Light // Wings of Desire
Romance - Endless Love
Moin - You Never End
Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements - Rain on the Road
fantasy of a broken heart - Feats of Engineering
Wishy - Triple Seven
Good Morning - Good Morning Seven
Chanel Beads - Your Day Will Come
Ezra Feinberg - Soft Power
Mica Levi - Slob Air
Doechi - Alligator Bites Never Heal
Cowboy Sadness - Selected Jambient Works Vol. 1
John Glacier - Like A Ribbon EP / Duppy Gun EP
The Crying Nudes - The Crying Nudes
Mount Kimbie - The Sunset Violet
Klô Pelgag - Abracadabra
Milan W - Leave Another Day
Luke Sanger - Dew Point Harmonics
Kevin Richard Martin & KMRU - Disconnect
Rafael Toral - Spectral Evolution
Clarissa Connelly - World of Work
naemi - Dust Devil
Clairo - Slow Dance
Skee Mask - Resort // ISS010
Bill Callahan - Resuscitate!
Sam Wilkes (w/ Dylan Day, Chris Fishman, Thom Gill, Craig Weinrib) - iiyo iiyo iiyo
Helado Negro - PHASOR
Nilufur Yanya - My Method Actor
Astrid Sonne - Great Doubt
MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
Hour - Ease the Work
Able Noise - High Tide
ROY - Spoons for the World
Adam Wiltzie - Eleven Fugues for a Sodium Pentothal
41 MORE ALBUMS FROM 2024 I LIKE A LOT ON A FEW LISTENS AND I MIGHT WELL ADD TO THE ABOVE LIST WHEN I’VE BEEN ABLE TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH THEM NOW I NO LONGER LISTEN TO ENDLESS AWFUL NEWS PODCASTS ALL THE TIME LIKE I DID FOR MUCH OF THE YEAR
Actress - Statik
ELUCID - ELEVATOR
bodies of divine infinite eternal spirit - the great guitar of universal compassion
Good Morning - The Accident
Vegyn - The Road To Hell is Paved With Good Intentions
Jeff Parker and ETA IVtet - Freakadelic
Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer
Bananagun - Why Is The Colour of the Sky?
Geordie Greep - The New Sound
Claire Rousay - The Bloody Lady
Jessica Pratt - Life Is
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Opus
Greg Foat - The Rituals of Infinity
Rosie Lowe - Lover, Other
Mach-Hommy - #RICHAXXHAITIAN
Draag - Actually, The Quiet Is Nice
Jake Xerxes Fussell - When I’m Called
DORIS - Ultimate Love Songs Collection
Belong - Realistic IX
Dialect - Atlas of Green
Nidia & Valentina - Estradas
Miltary Genius - Scarred For Life
Couch Slut - You Could Do It
AG Cook - Britpop
Joanne Robertson & Dean Blunt - Backstage Raver
Multi-Surface - NAP
Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To
Arooj Aftab - Night Reign
Miracle Debt - Under The Shadow
Monolake - Studio
Bill Ryder Jones - lechyd Da
Holy Tongue & Shackleton - The Tumbling Psychic Joy of Now
Flore Laurentienne - Feulles IV
Shabason, Krgovich, Sage - S/T
The Slaps - Mudglimmer
Christopher Owens - I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
Naoki Zushi - IV
Cuneiform Tabs - S/T
Organic Pulse Ensemble - Zither Suite
Speakers Corner Quartet - Mr Loverman (OST)
Ganavya - Daughter of a Temple
NEW ALBUMS FROM WELL KNOWN MAJOR ARTISTS FROM 2024 THAT ARE ON LOTS OF LISTS AND NO ONE REALLY GETS MUCH OUT OF ME INCLUDING THEM BUT TO LEAVE THEM OUT SEEMS SILLY AND A BIT WEIRD BECAUSE I DID THINK THEY WERE GREAT (AND THIS MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT THE POINT OF DOING THESE LISTS REALLY IS ACTUALLY)
Kendrick Lamar - GNX
Laura Marling - Patterns In Repeat
Tyler, The Creator - CHROMAKOPIA
The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
Michael Kiwanuka - Small Changes
Charli xcx - BRAT / Brat and it’s…
Father John Misty - Mahashmashana
ScHoolboy Q - BLUE LIPS
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God